Losing Kal, Gaining Clark
by Xanderlike
Summary: At First Kara Zor-El hates everything about Earth. She hates the blue sky and the green grass, the polluted air and the alien heartbeats of the people around her. Most of all, she hates Clark Kent. Because he's not Kal-El and never will be.


At first Kara Zor-El hates the world called Earth.

She hates the blue sky. The green grass. The polluted air. The alien heartbeats of the people around her and the way they never stop talking. This world is so loud, the people are so cruel- to themselves and each other. She hates everything about it. She hates everything about the humans of Earth.

Most of all, she hates Clark Kent.

She hates Clark Kent because he isn't Kal-El. He's a stranger who's stolen the face of her baby cousin. He's a stranger who doesn't know her, doesn't know their world. Who can't share her grief because he only has the cold knowledge of the data crystals in the Fortress of Solitude rather than the warmth of living memory. He speaks to her in his badly accented Kryptonese and calls her family but even though he wears the El Family crest, even though she can see Jor-El in his features, he has the eyes of a stranger.

The eyes of a Terran.

Rao, she missed Kal. She would have refused to leave her parents if not for Kal. The thought of Kal- sweet, innocent Kal- all alone on an alien world with no one to look after him, no one to help him remember Krypton and his family- that had been enough to make her make the near-impossible journey across the stars.

She could not abandon Kal.

But she had failed him nonetheless.

Kal had been alone on this alien world, and he had had no choice but to become one of them. She wasn't there for him when she might have been able to save Kal-El. Now there was this stranger- this _alien_ stranger in his place.

He wants her to stay with him. They spend their first few days together at the farm he grew up on. He asks her questions about Krypton and answers her about Earth and the strange new abilities she has on this world. Earth is changing her- changing her like it did Kal.

And she hates that too.

What good is this power to her now? Her new strength, her enhances senses- even the ability to fly on her own power- are useless. She can't use them to change the past. She can't save Krypton. She can't save Kal.

She does not want to be around Clark Kent- around this stranger who wears the family crest and calls himself "Superman" like it means something. She can't. It hurts her the way that nothing else on this world can.

So she asks him to find her a new home. A place she can learn about this world without having to mourn Kal every time she sees the face of the man who replaced him. She asks him to leave her alone.

She sees the hurt on his face, and it stings her more than she wants to admit. But Clark Kent gives her what she asks for, and it's the beginning of her seeing that as alien as he has become, there is still a connection between them. He wants her to be happy.

The Danvers are scientists- like her parents had been. They are kind. They smell wrong- like all Terrans- but she's becoming used to it. Day by day, she feels grows accustomed to the alien foods that are the wrong color or the wrong texture and the wrong taste.

Alex, their daughter, is her first friend.

Alex asks her the questions that her parents (out of kindness) do not. Alex has a scientific mind, and she wants to know all about Krypton. That curiosity of hers helps bridge the gap between Terran and Kryptonian. She asks, and she answers, and somehow her answers do not sting the way that Clark's had. They do not remind her of all that she had lost when she arrived too late.

And as time passes … as the wounds start to heal … she's able to bear the presence of Clark Kent in her life.

He shows up for her first Christmas in his civilian guise as Clark Kent instead of the world famous Superman. He's almost painfully shy with the Danvers- even though they know who he is- and he looks away when he presents Kara with her first Christmas present ever: a copy of the Book of Rao that he had made for her by hand.

She knows that he does not believe in Rao as she does, but she's touched by his effort to respect her beliefs. Later after the Christmas Dinner, he asks her to tell the story of Jaf-El and how the Tanthuo Flez (the winged ones) saved the people of Krypton from the Great Deluge.

She tells it twice. First in Kryptonese for her lost family and world. Second in English for her new Earth Family.

After that, Clark tells her the Terran story of Noah and the Great Flood. For the rest of the night, all of them- even Alex- share stories of Earth and Krypton, and Kara gradually comes to realize what Clark is trying to tell her- that the people of Earth may be _different_ , but they are more like the people of Krypton than not. She's not just a visitor to a strange planet; she can have a _home_ here.

And that, looking at the Danvers- and at Clark himself- she already _does_ have a home here.

And while Clark is not the Kal-El he would have been on Krypton- not the scientist who would have followed in Jor-El's footsteps- he is just as much a seeker of truth as his father had ever been. And that while he does fight criminals, he always acts to preserve life as a true Son of Krypton would. He is different from what Kal would have been, but at his heart he's still the same good hearted person her baby cousin had been when she last saw him.

He's still her family.

He doesn't ask her to come live with him again, but Kara knows that his home is always open to her if she wants it.

But Clark Kent- Superman- belongs to the world- to this _Earth_ that Kara is coming to cherish in her own fashion, and she does not want to be a burden to him. His destiny is too important for that.

And Kara wants to discover her own destiny.

And as Kara Zor-El grows up to become Kara Danvers, she she knows that even though Krypton and her parents are gone, she still has a home. She still has a family. She still has her cousin.

He is not Kal-El. He will never be Kal-El, son of Jor-El and Lara.

He is Clark Kent. He is Clark, son of Jonathan and Martha Kent.

But he's still family.

And that's enough for her.


End file.
